Out of the Cauldron, Into the Frying Pan
by dusk-dreamer-midnight-thief
Summary: An Eileen and Tobias snippet series.
1. Chapter 1

_Where Eileen Prince runs away and joins the Muggles._

_… __I think I've written the word 'Muggle' far too much tonight._

_For the full version of this chapter, please click the link on my profile. I gots to conform with a certain code of practice here. ;)_

_WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER: Violence, parental abuse, swearing._

* * *

**_1._**

In her not-so-distant future, she would look back on this moment as a stupid idea. As something she should have known better than to agree to, to surrender to. But there was something about him, about this man who had pushed down the walls that her family had worked so hard to keep up around her... something... it was a power he had that she would never escape from until her dying day.

Eileen could never have imagined what that power, that something, would have eventuated into. Not back then.

She was, obviously, confident enough (back then at least) to trust that she would be adequately prepared to defend herself should something untoward happen. He was only a Muggle after all. This is why she had no qualms in accompanying Tobias back to his shared but presently vacated London council flat a week after their first meeting. They had arranged to meet in the bar once again... Eileen wasn't very hopeful that he would remain true to his word, but surprisingly enough, he was sitting there as she entered the bar, waiting for her.

_He was waiting for me... me and only me. _

Eileen made a point tonight not to drink anything else but one glass of the Muggle Merlot tonight. That way she would be sure that it wasn't the alcohol making decisions for her. Sure enough, the feelings that she had for Tobias remained as potent as they did the last Friday night. They laughed and talked and cuddled on the couch of the damp, run-down flat into the early hours of the morning, drinking cold tea that they had forgotten to pour in the mad, lustful rush of getting lost in each other. Eileen had never felt so happy.

"Oh, that was disgusting - I loved it -" Eileen laughed after placing the empty, chipped mug upon the table – which was harder than it looked while kissing another person frantically.

"Mmm - you're the first woman - to compliment and insult my tea - at the same time, Eileen. Such - a way with words." Tobias replied, considerably out of breath. Eileen leant her head back and smiled. As Tobias continued kissing the nape of her slender neck, sending cool shivers down her spine, Eileen looked around in wonder at all the various Muggle contraptions that his living room held. They seemed run-down, but that made Eileen love them all the more. There was a dusty looking grey box in the corner with one single dial and two protruding wires on it that caught her eye. She wondered what it could be, and also just how ingenious Muggles really were. Everything here appeared well used and well loved, quite unlike the intact coldness of the 'Maison de Prince'.

For the next few moments Eileen had become so lost in pleasurable thought that the feeling of a warm hand caressing her inner thighs merely added to the blissful sensation. All sensible thought came back to her, however, when the hand urged to move further.

"No," Eileen's eyes snapped open – her hand snapping towards his with equal rapidity. "Not here, not tonight, Tobias."

Much to her delight, Tobias immediately leapt off the couch... "Sorry, I just... I thought, well, you looked like –"

Eileen wrapped her arms around him. He had certainly proved his worth to her. "Tobias Snape..." she whispered, lightly kissing the back of his neck. "I'm afraid I like you too much."

Every word was true. She was _very _afraid that she liked him too much. Little did she know that twenty years later she would still be thinking the exact same thing.

"I'll see you soon tho' won't I?" he asked as she nestled into his neck. "There's somethin' about you Eileen. I wouldn't be very happy at all if I didn' see you again."

Eileen pressed her lips to Tobias's once again. "Of course you'll see me. I'll meet you here. Tomorrow if you'd like."

"What if I meet you at yours? Be a right sight better than this pigsty of a place..."

"No." Eileen said firmly, backing away almost immediately. When she was met with his look of complete bafflement she added: "It's my... um... parents. They wouldn't approve of my running around with strange boys." (Muggle _men... Muggles in general) _"Best if I make my way here."

"Alone?"

Eileen gave a faint a smile. "You're sweet. I can take care of myself. Promise. But for now, just before I head off home..." she walked over the to grey box with the wires. "Can you operate this for me?"

Tobias followed her with a very amused expression on his face. "What, the television? Well, I suppose. I could make us some more tea."

_A telly vision...? _

"Yes, put on this telly vision" Eileen nodded enthusiastically, never considering once how very strange she must've sounded to this Muggle. Tobias flicked the switch and she opened her eyes wide in amazement... it was exactly like a photo... only the people in the photos didn't just move around in their frame, stuck inside four walls – no, scenes kept changing before her eyes... different black and white people kept appearing and talking. There was laughter in the background.

"Amazing..." Eileen whispered in absolute bewilderment. All her life she had known that Muggles were an miraculous people, it was a world that she had obsessed about ever since learning about its existence, but never knew that such people, without an ounce of magic within them, were capable of such inventions, such creativity.

Tobias snorted in amusement as he watched her. "You mean to tell me your posh fam'ly don' have a television?" he said with a laugh, cutting into Eileen's current hypnotic state. "Thought you'd have a much better one than this old box n' all. Only have one 'cause Peter, my flatmate, was given one for his birthday... rich Ma up near Edinburgh you see."

"No... I... well, my parents are somewhat afraid of the future, shall we say." Eileen replied, far too beguiled by the funny Muggles on this _telly vision _contraption to truly register what she was saying to Tobias.

"Ah, I see. Well you just sit there and I'll make us summore tea before I drop you off."

"Mmm," Eileen mumbled, wide-eyed.

As she sat on the floor, inches from this incredibly piece of Muggle genius, as she heard the faint noises of Tobias busying himself with washing up their mugs, Eileen felt the first tears well up in her eyes. She would've given anything to stay here and never go back to the wizarding world. She wanted to learn everything possible about them, wanted to ask Tobias so many questions... of course, her stringent mother had forbidden her from taking any Muggle studies classes at

Hogwarts, but she would stay up into the early hours of the morning reading all the Muggle books she could, locked away in the Ravenclaw dormitories. She collected bits and pieces of the Muggle world whenever she came across them – Muggle money, Muggle bus tickets, she had even once gone to her friends "ballet" recital once – and had enthused to her friend about how beautiful it was so much that she had bought her a book on the art for her 15th birthday. It was a book that she kept hidden in a locked box at the very back of her wardrobe, amoungst all the other wonderful Muggle objects.

Eileen hastily wiped away her now freely flowing tears before the Muggle man, who would never know, or even believe, just how lucky he was, came back into the room.

* * *

After months of perfect bliss with Tobias, Eileen knew that something was certain to come crashing down... and unfortunately, as in the world of academia, she found herself hardly ever wrong.

When she came down the cold, tiled steps of Prince Manor one morning (trying very hard not to show how happy she was save interrogation by her father), she found a much different sort of man shoot a glare at her from the sitting room. In one swift move, Atticus Prince had come to the foot of the staircase to meet his daughter, still clothed in her nightdress.

"Had a good time, last night did we?" he barked. "Didn't think to tell your mother or I where you were off to?"

"I'm nineteen now," Eileen replied as calmly as possible. "I came of age two years ago. I can take care of myself."

"While you are under my roof it makes no difference if you are nineteen, twelve or thirty! You are to inform your mother or myself of your whereabouts!"

"So you can keep tabs on me?" Eileen replied bitterly, her heavy brows furrowing.

But Atticus didn't shout as he so often did... this time a nasty smile appeared on his lips.

"Oh, we've already done that my dear."

A wave of cold dread washed over her. They had been spying on her? Trying to find out what she had been up to? In that case... did it mean...?

"What do you mean?"

"Did you let that disgusting Muggle touch you? Did he ruin you for all the other suitors?" Atticus demanded, as nonchalantly as if he were merely discussing business at the Ministry.

Her silence and defiant heavy breathing was all the affirmation he needed. His hand flew toward the hem of her nightdress and he pulled her toward him, so that their faces were merely an inch from each other. His eyes were alive with hate and fire.

"You are to _never _speak to that Muggle scum again, do you understand?" he snarled. "Do _you understand?!" _he shook her a little more roughly this time. "Frolicking around with the dregs of the world like some common Muggle _slut! _Do you realise the sacrifice and the work your poor mother and I have put in to ensuring you become even _adequate _marriage material? What with this boyish body -" he grabbed at her non-existant breasts which made her yelp and grab back at his hands in order to try and make him stop. "- and this plain face of yours! We had a _Black _who was interested in a possible contract with you! Then you go and risk it all by acting like a fucking whore with Muggles! MUGGLES!"

It appeared he couldn't get enough of shouting out their names with such rage that spit was hitting splattering all over her cheeks and into her eyes.

Eileen and her father struggled with each other on the landing, but he was far too burly for her. He shoved her against the frame of one of the doors; Eileen hit her head so hard that the room started to spin. Seeing his daughter lying against the frame, her hand on her throbbing head did not deter Atticus, did not garner even the slightest bit of sympathy. He grabbed her nightie with his furiously shaking hands and with one, swift stroke, ripped off the entire garment, leaving her naked from the waist up. Eileen screamed and pulled the remainder of her nightie up to her breasts, but the damage had already been done.

"Look what you made me do!" Atticus spat furiously, as if her actions and her actions alone were the sole reason she now found herself half naked and crying with a fully grown wizard on top of her (her own father no less). He reached a hand out and grabbed her by the neck to stop her struggling and screaming simultaneously. "I've put up with your gallivanting and insolence for years, but no more. If you want to live under my house, you will abide by _my _rules. Understand? _Understand?" _

Eileen coughed and spluttered underneath the strain of his hand. "Mother - " she coughed. "Mother - will kill you - "

"What 'mother' doesn't know won't hurt her..." her father said with an ominous sort of sneer. Eileen stopped struggling and looked up at him with air of utter terror. What was he going to do her? He had never... he had never abused her in _that _way before. She readied her knee for one swift kick just in case he tried to attempt it. But no attack of that kind came... he drew back his head from hers and spat in her face. Considering what she _had _been expecting - it came as something of a relief. WIth that, he had stalked away and down the stairs.

Eileen clutched at her sore throat as she managed to drag herself into her bedroom. She shut the door harshly with one kick and lay on the floor, gazing up at the ceiling with a face full of tears, mixed with her own father's spit and scorn.

_I'll leave tonight... _she thought.

* * *

Nightfall came after what felt like a thousand years to Eileen. Neither her father nor her mother, back from her Ministry work, ventured upstairs to check on her all evening. She had hastily drawn herself a warm bath after her father's disgusting display, letting the soothing warm water wash over the unwomanly body that had so incensed him and his prospects for her. If hadn't been for the man who was, hopefully, awaiting her eager return into the safe sanctuary of the Muggle world she feared she might have just held her own head underneath the water and never come up again.

But no... there was a much better life awaiting her outside these walls, and away from all that was magical and unclean.

She spent the majority of the evening grabbing whatever item of clothing she could and stuffing it into a suitcase. It was only when night came when she realised that she didn't want to see a single one of these garments or any of her possessions ever again. They harboured far too many memories. Eileen shoved the full to bursting suitcase back into the back of her colossal wardrobe.

It had to have been around midnight when she felt it was safe to creep out onto the upstairs landing. All was dark and silent. She kept her ears peeled for the scurrying of their house elf but none came. She pulled up the collar of her most Muggle-looking coat and side-stepped down the spiral staircase and made her way to the front door. Before her hand rested upon the silver nob, however, she faltered. Biting her lip and rushing back to her bedroom, she rummaged through her bedside draw for something she not used in over a week now... her wand gazed up at her from amongst the diamond earrings and various bottles of perfumes... she fought with herself over whether she should pocket it, and hold it close to her chest forever out of Tobias's eyes, or whether she should leave every shred of herself behind in this cold unfeeling mansion.

Her old school books sat in the corner looking quite forlorn also. Damn Ravenclaw soul. She could never abandon a book, no matter how useless it would be from this point on.

With a heavy sigh, she swished the wand one last time and performed a Shrinking charm on the books - which now fit easily in one pocket. Then she pocketed the damned wand and and tried again.

_Tobias will understand one day... when he is ready..._

* * *

She could tell by his expression as he opened the door to her, shaking and wet from the rain, that understanding was not going to come anytime soon.

"What...? Ei - Eileen?" he asked, blinking the sleep out of his eyes. "Fuck me, do you know what time it is? Everything alright?"

She had had enough of talking today. The sight of a man who wasn't her father, not a wizard and not related to her in any way was a beautiful sight to behold indeed. Before she even knew what she was going she was kissing him passionately, both of her hands running themselves all over his gloriously Muggle face and his Muggle hair. They stumbled into the flat and ended up against the wall opposite.

"Well..." Toby murmured in between her furious kisses. "I'm - glad it was me n' not Peter who answered t'door -"

"Can I stay with you tonight?" Eileen whispered tenderly, just an inch from his face. "Just one night... I... don't have anywhere else..."

"Of course. _Hey..." _he looked into her bloodshot eyes and ran one strong hand through her stringy black hair. "What's happened to you? Your family...?"

"I don't have a family," she stated simply and defiantly. She loved him all the more when he asked no further questions. She began kissing his neck fervently as he swept his hands over her body and her breasts, it was as if he was healing the previous inflictions from her abuser. Their bodies smacked into various angles of the wall as the back of him searched for his bedroom. By this stage they were ripping off each others clothes like a woman and man possessed. Eileen jumped into his arms as he pushed open the bedroom door, his hands cupped her as she wrapped her legs around his waist.

They fell asleep almost immediately after he had finished, naked and wrapped safely in each others arms as the dark rain trickled down the windows... Toby clearly unable to withstand the physical exertion any longer, Eileen unable to withstand the mental.

She awoke early the next morning in a state of complete disorientation. It took her a few long moments of gazing around the room and at the slumbering man next to her to remember that she was not back at Prince Manor - and nor would she ever be again. The reality of her hasty decision begun to sink in deeper when it wasn't one 'o clock in the morning, and she wasn't standing in the rain facing a very dishevelled man who looked quite delicious in the lamplight. Now, in the morning light, the bedroom looked positively bare, and her neck was aching from where her father had grasped it.

... The Muggle man currently sleeping next to her still looked positively delicious, however. And she was pleased to feel absolutely no regret for what she had just done.

How little she knew back then.

How little she knew that a cycle was slowly but surely about to be repeated. That she would end up just as trapped and just as isolated and just as sad as she would have done in her old world. How little she knew how much her emotions and her entire being would be manipulated until she was nothing but a shell...

Tobias slowly opened his eyes and smiled.  
"Good morning, beautiful." He said softly, kissing her on her needy lips.

No. There was no possible way she could have known... not with a kiss and a smile so brilliantly crafted as that.


	2. A Failed Intervention

**2\. **

**A Failed Intervention.**

That one night turned into days. Days turned into months. A month into a year. And now the young couple stood at the end of a particularly dingy street, facing a particularly tiny and decrepit house in the dodgy end of Cokeworth. The textile mill in which Tobias had recently managed to acquire new work loomed over them like a particularly foreboding cloud.

Spinner's End, the street was called. It was certainly fitting…

It had been the cheapest place they could find on his pittance of a wage, but she had to admit as she crossed over the abode once more and glanced around at the cosy living room surrounded by bookshelves, and the little kitchen barely big enough to fit both of them at the same time, it wasn't half-bad. It had been a good find.

She hoped it would make a good home.

Perhaps, were it not for the fact that there was a pub just a few streets down from the house, it would have done. At least that's what Eileen had to tell herself.

They had married at the registry office a while before Tobias's drinking had gotten a bit out of hand. Sure, he would have the occasional spree on payday (not that she approved - but he worked hard and always made sure that food was on the table, she thought it only fair to let him have his fortnightly splurge) and come home a little more aggressive and randy than usual… but it was nothing she could not cope with. Their fights only lasted a few hours at most; they always ended up making up and making love afterward, and everything went back to normal again.

But then the fortnightly sprees turned into weekly sprees. Weekly antics turned into twice-weekly antics. It was probably at this point where she began to feel a little concerned. Their money was dwindling and they had bills up to their eyeballs.

She managed to catch him on a sober moment one morning before work. He used to be quite pleasant on his sober moments - that was until the alcohol began to poison his nature permanently.

"Toby…" Eileen started gently over her morning Muggle newspaper she had curled up on the chair with with a mug of hot coffee after she had finished cooking the breakfast. "Come sit next to me for a moment…"

"Can't," he stated defiantly, rummaging around in the kitchen drawers. "Already going to be late as it is. Have you seen my bloody keys? They were here last night!"

"Toby…" she said again, more forcefully. It made him stop and turn to face her.

"No pub tonight, please," she requested imploringly. "It's…" the words hung on the tip of her lips just aching to be said, but she couldn't bear to see him weakened by them. "I need to pay the electricity bill before it gets cut again." she settled on.

"But it's Parker's birthday today. We were just going to go out for an hour or so for a drink!" he objected pathetically. Eileen sighed. Considering the amount of 'birthday parties' he attended, he was the most popular man in all of Manchester. She was starting to get mighty sick of his lies.

"So a few drinks is worth an entire week of sitting in the dark surrounded by candles, it is?" she sniped viciously.

Toby shrugged carelessly. "Wouldn't mind, actually. Be quite romantic wouldn't it?"

Eileen shot daggers at him. "If you mean between you and your hand, then yes!"

"Ah, Ei - don't be like that."

"I'm warning you!" her hand clasped down on the paper violently. "If you stumble in as pissed as anything tonight after squandering all of our money I am taking a vow of chastity for the rest of my life!"

"You just don't want me to be happy!"

"You -" Eileen started, her voice trembling in her anger. She closed her eyes and took a breath… it would not do to come in guns blazing. It would only push him away further. "You're not well, Toby."

Tears stung her eyes.

He took a beat before he answered her. He would not meet her gaze now.

"Now't wrong with me, woman. I'm as fit as I ever was."

That masculine working-class mentality of his. If he wasn't bleeding out profusely then he was as fit as he ever was. A year ago it was irresistibly rugged… now it just infuriated her. She crossed over to him and held him supportively by the shoulders, she didn't want to give him any other choice but to look at her.

"Don't go to that pub," she pleaded. "Christ, Tobias, it's like you enjoy making me so unhappy sometimes."

"I don't," he assured her, reaching out to cup her cheek. "Of course I don't, Ei. I just..."

Her eyes widened, willing him to tell her what he was feeling.

"What, my love?" she pressed gently.

He frowned.

"What? I just want to celebrate with the lads, is all. Not a crime is it?"

Her whole body felt like it was deflating like a balloon. How could she have been so stupid as to believe that anything truly introspective would ever come out of his stupid dunderheaded mouth? She sniffed in annoyance.

"Well, good luck finding the couch in the dark when you come back, you blundering imbecile!" she seethed. "Because that's where you'll be for the next month!"

"Good! I could do without your nagging for once!"

With that, he had stalked out from the house and to work, returning momentarily when he had forgotten to pick up the keys that he been previously searching for. He found them on the living room table and gave his wife a quick look of contempt before he left once more. It took Eileen a few minutes to stop shaking… she then calmly returned to studying the crumpled Muggle newspaper.

He did indeed come stumble back late that night. Eileen had made sure that she was in bed and pretending to be asleep before he returned. It was always easier that way… rows could be avoided and he could sleep it off and return to being sober Toby the next morning - and she would not hate him so much that way.

Hate herself more like…


	3. Good Toby, Bad Toby

_Warnings: Swearing, mild violence. _

**3\. **

Eileen was not the most maternal of women… and she never had wanted children, not in a million years.

Breeding was almost an art form in Pureblood circles. Matches were carefully selected as delicately as complex surgery (she felt confident using that analogy after she had studied bits and bobs of Muggle medicine during Tobias's work days), with the sole ambition to create perfectly inbred Pureblood offspring. And the whole boring damn cycle would continue forever.

At least with a Muggle, this would alleviate half that problem. The problem of actually having to care for something (a smelly, dependent tiny human with no sense of circadian rhythm and would probably grow up to resent the ground you walked on any way) still remained. When she was at Hogwarts Eileen had prided herself on her independence and skills in both the academic and competitive realm. While many of her friends talked about boyfriends and various frivolous teenage infatuations, she would be immersing herself in books or off playing Gobstones with the Ravenclaw team (of which she later became captain)… if there were boys, she did not notice them. She supposed this was probably because wizards had never really 'done' it for her.

She surely did notice the Muggle boys.

They had fallen in love and married in a whirlwind of carnal passion. When you spent most of your time together drinking at bars, eating greasy food and fucking at every possible opportunity there was hardly any time for serious conversation. Not that Tobias was the type for serious conversation…

And just like the little secret of her witch blood - the secret that she never planned to procreate remained hidden within the confines of her chest, constantly teetering on the edge of coming out. It was this combined guilt that kept her believing that she deserved all of the drunken shouting Toby had begun to unleash upon her a good few times a week nowadays.

The first time he had ever brought up the possibility of children was a good five years after their wedding. They had been for dinner at the home of one of his stock-standard friends and his stock-standard blonde wife, where they showed off their brand new squealing, stinky little sprog. Eileen counted the seconds on the clock as the other three laughed over Muggle anecdotes she did not understand. Tobias downed nearly half a bottle of wine by himself which did not help her already dark mood.

"Cute little thing I suppose," Toby drawled as the stock-standard friends waved their goodbyes at them from the door of their much nicer looking home. He placed her arm around Eileen's back and pulled her toward him as they clapped their way down the cobble-stoned streets on the way back to Spinner's End.

Eileen stared down at the two pairs of feet criss-crossing over the wet road. "I suppose," she replied with a sarcastic tone. "If you like a pile of squealing flesh stuck on your breasts for a year."

He laughed it off. Thank God. It wasn't often that drinking made him amiable… but she supposed a few meagre glasses of wine were a huge improvement on whatever hard liquor he consumed in that pub and the alleyways behind it. It begun to rain, and he immediately took off his smokey smelling leather coat and placed it over her head. She sunk into his body, happy to have him back.

He didn't continue the vein of conversation again until well into the night - after they had arrived back at Spinner's End sopping wet, stripped off their clothes and had finished making love.

"I mean, obviously, we'll have 'em" he told her as they lay in their bed, as if it was as painfully expected as the next gas bill. "Probably best to wait though - at least 'til I get that promotion. Old Mr. Flatterly won't last much longer, not with that arthritis of his."

_Best to wait another thirty years, _Eileen thought as she curled up into a ball and watched a moth fluttering around the orange glow of the streetlamp outside. _At least then it'd be biologically impossible for me to bear offspring. And magical offspring too, most likely. _

She couldn't go back to that world again. No matter how often Tobias had begun to argue and shout at her, no matter how many nights she spent behind a locked bathroom door crying… the wizarding world was filled with much more dangerous things.

* * *

She was thirty now and good Toby was coming to play far, far less than bad Toby. Frequent sweeps of the house for bottles of label-less clear and brown liquids were commonplace - and god help her if he ever walked in on her doing it. She knew all his hiding places - on a shelf in the airing cupboard, right at the back of the shed, pushed to the back on top of the kitchen shelves. She hadn't a clue why he kept trying to stash it in the same places over and over again… though, to be fair, living in such a tiny house, coupled with the fact that his brain cells were slowly fizzling into nothingness, there was not much opportunity to be inventive with space.

This afternoon was a particularly bad one. She had found two bottles, one half-drunk, while Tobias was at work. She was in such a rage that she had thrown the half-empty bottle (it was never half-full to her) across the kitchen where it had smashed into so many pieces that she was still cleaning it up with the broom when he had arrived home.

"Hullo?" came his call from the door. Huh. What a surprise. Home early today because he knew there was ample stuff waiting for him to ingest at home. Eileen would usually have been scared out of her wits to have him walk in on her, but she was so incensed that she did not care. He had been _so good _for days… and all this time, he had been harbouring these things in their house again, just waiting for an opportune moment to down the lot in a drunken stupor. The footsteps crossed the living and came to a stop just a few feet behind her.

"What you break?" came his question behind her.

Eileen continued to sweep up the tiniest of shards on the floor, before thinking better of it. She pulled herself up by the backdoor and spun around, dustpan in hand. With one swift swipe of her foot she sent several of the larger shards of glass skirting toward him across the floor.

"Oi! What you think you're doing?!" he objected loudly, jumping out of the way.

"_You _can get on your own knees and clean up the mess you brought into this house!" she shouted, unable to hide the pain in her voice.

"Mess! You were the one who broke it, woman."

"Oh, yes, how clumsy of me. Accidentally letting your preciousbottle of cornershop piss slip out of my hands like that? How could I have been so butterfingered?"

The penny finally dropped. He raised both of his hands as if he were surrendering on the battlefield.

"Eileen…"

"_Why, _Toby?" she pleaded with him, the dustpan positively shaking in her right hand. "You have been so good the past week. You've almost been _pleasant. _What's happened that you felt the need to throw all good favour with me out the window? Am I worth less than this to you?" she shoved a finger toward the puddle of brownish liquid on the floor.

"No! You- you're… I can't…" he took a deep breath to be trying to collect his thoughts; mid-sentence, however, it appeared he changed his mind. He spoke with a furious, defensive fervour this time. "Can't a man have no outlet, eh! I work my fucking fingers to the bone all day - for you, you ungrateful…!"

"I'd rather us be on the street and living out of dustbins if it meant that you didn't take another drop of this heinous concoction!"

"Ah, will you shut up with your fucking words, woman! All high and mighty. Thinks she knows everything!" Toby was positively yelling into her face now. "How can you talk so smart and act so dumb, that's what I want to know!"

So he wanted her to stop her talking, did he? _Right… _Eileen thought as she backed toward the other bottle of piss on the kitchen counter that he had clearly not noticed yet. _I can stop talking. _

She picked up the second, full bottle with a completely deadpan expression. Tobias's eyes widened upon the sight of it - his eyes flashed a very dangerous warning.

"Don't you dare."

Her glittering black eyes still boring into his, Eileen casually wrapped her hand around the screw top lid and spun it open viciously; the scent of it hit her almost immediately… the combined scent of unforgiving methylated spirits and shame. For one irrational second she almost considered sculling the entire bottle in front of him, just to show him what it felt like to be on the other end of things, but she couldn't stomach it. She couldn't make herself like him. A failure like him. She backed toward the sink and inverted her hand; the liquid began glugging out of the bottle and down the drain.

"Stupid bitch!" his hand flew toward the bottle, but in that millisecond it had taken him to reach - all of the booze had suddenly disappeared, as if into thin air. As if the neck of the bottle had been as wide as a bucket. His eyes began darting wildly, confusedly between the bottle and the sink, as if it were still residing in the bottle somewhere. Of course, she knew what had happened… there was no need for a wand anymore with her stress levels gone into overdrive… but her husband was thoroughly perplexed.

"What the-?" he mumbled to himself, before suddenly remembering what she had done. He snatched the empty bottle out of her hand - and with one look of complete detestation, he drew his arm back and threw it violently against the wall just above her head.

Eileen shrieked and threw her hands in front of her face, under the depressing assumption that he had aimed it at her face, but the glass merely scattered into fragments in her stringy black hair.

"Now we've each had a turn breaking things!" he snarled. "And maybe you _are_ worth less to me than that." He too pointed at the spillage on the floor.

He didn't mean it. She could tell. And he would come to her later as he always did, and he would apologise and hold her in her arms. And she, being a love-starved fool, would forgive him and they would fuck each other senseless to make up for everything... before the next fight started. But it did not stop her eyes from welling up with pained tears and rolling down her face. She ran out of the room and pushed her way past his shoulder, leaving him to deal with his mess.

This was where she now found herself. Standing in front of the mirror in the locked bathroom crying her stupid eyes out. This was nothing new… merely a pattern of incidences that, while unpleasant, had slowly become part of her life. She would probably have a bath and try to relax herself before going back down and cooking his dinner; by then he should have changed back into good Toby for the rest of the night. Except tonight, there appeared to be something… rather different about her reflection.

Eileen frowned and looked down at her chest. Well… these were new…

New and very sore.


End file.
